


two of a kind

by Naraht



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pairs Skating, Gen, M/M, References to real figure skaters, Same-Sex Pairs Skating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 07:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14889992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: In a universe where same-sex pairs skating is entirely normal, things turn out a little differently for our heroes.





	two of a kind

**Author's Note:**

> Insofar as this refers or alludes to real skaters, it is obviously 99% fictional.

Victor Nikiforov could have made it as a singles skater. There was no doubt in his mind.

His triple axel was rock-solid; he had a decent quad toe loop; he thought he could land a quad salchow if Yakov would only give him some time with it in the harness. But that would never happen, because there was no point. Even his quad toe loop was no more than an indulgence now that he wasn't skating with Zhenya anymore. He kept it polished because it made him happy, but there was no call for it in competition.

He didn't blame Mila for that. Their side-by-side triple axels had catapulted them to the top of the podium two years in a row at the world championships. They had been the first pairs skaters to land them in competition – and were still the only ones, which was unsurprising, because even ladies singles skaters capable of pulling off a triple axel were as rare as hen's teeth. Mila was a fighter; Mila was exceptional. At Worlds last year – with just a little help from Victor's throw – she'd managed to land a quad flip.

Victor was bored anyway. He was twenty-seven years old, and he was a pairs skater. He would never need to land a jump in competition that his partner couldn't land – which meant that he would never need to learn another jump. He would never get the chance to attempt a quad flip himself.

"Maybe it's time for me to retire," he said quietly to Yakov, early one snowy morning before Mila had arrived at the rink.

"Retire?!" said Yakov. "Have you gone insane? You're on top of the world! You're only twenty-seven! You could go on for another ten years!"

Victor thought that sounded like hell on earth, and said so. Yakov gave him an expressive shrug and said no more.

A few days later, Yakov came up to him while he was wiping down his skates and said, apropos of nothing: "What do you want anyway, Vitya, side-by-side quad flips?"

"I know that's impossible," said Victor, not looking up.

"I just wanted to make certain!" said Yakov.

***

Victor visited Yakov's office all the time, for a whole host of reasons. For the regular round table with sports doctors and trainers and physios and performance coaches; to fight the eternal fight of planning Victor's calendar around sponsor commitments and ice shows; to rake him over the coals after yet another indiscreet comment to the press.

Even so, Victor felt an unfamiliar flutter in the pit of his stomach as he walked into the room, an odd sense of foreboding. Usually they had an appointment to talk, or Yakov just asked him to come in for a chat. This time, one of Yakov's assistant coaches had come and found him after his morning dance class. Without elaborating, he'd simply said _go upstairs, Yakov wants to see you now_.

Yakov was sitting behind his desk when Victor let himself in. He didn't look up. Victor leaned against the bookcase, awkwardly resting a hand on the third shelf and a foot on the first, which held nothing more than ringbinders full of training plans and score sheets.

"You know I hate it when you do that," grumbled Yakov. "Sit down, Vitya."

Victor sat down. He folded his hands in his lap and composed himself, as if he were preparing for a particularly important competition. Concentrating, he could feel his heart rate beginning to slow.

"Well?"

Yakov looked up finally from the pages of whatever he was reading. He cleared his throat. "You're done skating with Mila. It clearly isn't working."

Ice water coursed through his veins. Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn't that. He blinked, a flutter of eyelashes. Instinctively he smiled, steeling himself the only way he knew how.

"Is this because I said I wanted to retire? I didn't mean... I... We've won two world championships together!"

Unlike some other coaches there was nothing vindictive about Yakov, but even so he wondered whether he'd pushed the man too far.

"You're restless; she's restless too. Oh yes, don't think you're the only one who's capable of complaining to me. I'm not going to stand by and watch a partnership run itself into the ground."

 _You've done it before,_ thought Victor, but he would never have dared to say it aloud.

"This has been decided," Yakov concluded, as if he still had the might of the Soviet system standing behind him. As if it weren't Victor himself who bankrolled the training for himself and his partner, the team of specialists around them, as if it weren't Victor whose success had underpinned the Sport Club itself. But although the Soviet Union had long since crumbled, the Figure Skating Federation of Russia still stood, and even Victor Nikiforov was almost powerless against them. "From now on, Anya will be Mila's new partner."

"Mila has always wanted to skate lead," acknowledged Victor numbly. "She'll be good at it."

It made sense. He could see it. He could also see that there was no way Georgi and Anya could have carried on skating together after their acrimonious split. But would Yakov really have broken up the most successful pairs partnership in Russia just to accommodate the fallout of Georgi's disastrous love life? 

In the end, though he wished Mila well, his thoughts moved on quickly. _But what about me, Yakov? Who will I be skating with?_

He racked his brains, wishing he'd paid more attention to the competition at Nationals. (Even though the competition at Nationals hadn't been worth paying attention to.) Were there any Russian pairs skaters at loose ends? Or had Yakov looked abroad? Even then, he couldn't think of anyone. It was terrifying. If Yakov got this wrong, it was effectively the end of his career.

"You need a new challenge," said Yakov slowly. "A partner who will inspire you to stretch yourself. I want you to remember that I have your best interests at heart. I thought long and hard about this decision and took advice from across Russia. This partnership has the backing of the FFKK."

It wasn't exactly a statement calculated to reassure. If Yakov and the FFKK were behind it, then Victor's feelings were as good as irrelevant.

Yakov looked up at the door. "Come in," he said, raising his voice a little. The door burst open as if it had been on springs.

Fifteen-year-old Yuri Plisetsky took one step into the room and stopped dead. 

"Oh no," he said, staring at Victor. "No. Oh fuck."

"We're in the middle of a meeting here," said Victor, hoping against hope.

" _I know,_ " spat Yuri. "I'm in it too."

"Vitya, Yura," said Yakov superfluously. "Yura, Vitya. Your new partner."

Victor didn't bother looking at Yuri. This had nothing to do with him, whatever he might think. "Yakov, this is ridiculous! He's fifteen, he's never skated pairs before, and..."

"And he's regularly landing the quad toe loop and the quad salchow in practice. You want to improve your jumps? See if you can keep up with that. And don't tell me that you can't lift him, he's smaller and lighter than Mila."

 _For now,_ thought Victor. Yuri made a disgusted noise.

"I was going to win Juniors this year! I'm a singles skater! I don't want to skate pairs! And with him? I'd rather die!"

"You don't want to get an early promotion into Seniors this year and win the World Championship," said Yakov, a dangerous edge in his tone.

"No! I mean, yeah, but I..."

However angry Victor might have been about this whole thing, he was even more amused by Yuri's anger. "You don't think you could do it?" 

"Of course I can do it!"

"But it's not as if you'd know," said Victor.

Yakov folded his arms across his chest, looking satisfied. Too late, Victor realised that by stoking Yuri's competitive instinct he was playing into Yakov's hands.

"You couldn't ask for a better apprenticeship," said Yakov. "You'll be learning from the best."

He'd said the same thing to Victor twelve years ago when he'd called him, still only fourteen, into this very same office. Lounging in the opposite chair, long legs stretched out in front of him, had been the pairs world champion. Zhenya.

 _You couldn't ask for a better apprenticeship,_ Yakov had said. _A few years in pairs is the perfect launch into a singles career. You'll be competing in seniors right away, you'll have a couple of world championships under your belt before you're even eighteen. Juniors counts for nothing. This is the real thing._

_You'll be back in singles by the time you're seventeen,_ Yakov had said.

Victor had believed it all. Every promise, every dream of glory. He'd even believed things he'd never been promised. He'd spent hours watching ice dancing when he was meant to be studying the performances of his competitors, dreaming that someday he would skate with someone who would look at him, touch him the way that Stéphane touched Johnny. That he and his partner would be able to express that much tenderness, to show it off to the world.

(And that someone would fuck him the way that Stéphane and Johnny were obviously fucking, but this was a private aspiration unrelated to his skating career.)

Of course Victor had not been fated to become Stéphane's partner. In addition to not being Swiss, he was not an ice dancer. He was stuck skating pairs: a dinosaur of a discipline that combined, so everyone snidely said, the athletic prowess of ice dancing (precious little) with the artistic subtlety of male singles (even less). And he had been paired with Zhenya, the king of the triple axels.

Yet it was impossible to deny was that Zhenya was a champion: instinct, talent and training all combined. Together they worked themselves relentlessly, hard enough that even Yakov was occasionally forced to call a halt. Victor had been enraptured with being in Seniors, with being good enough to be called Zhenya's partner. For that reason he had hidden the tears and the pain and the fear. If he had wept, it was only into his pillow at night, when no one could see. 

He had hidden it all, pretended it didn't matter, because it didn't. When he was worse than Zhenya, he was not good enough. When he was better than Zhenya – his quad toe loop was better – he tried to hide that too, because it made Zhenya unhappy. All of this was worth it, because all of it was necessary to win.

Together they had gone to the Olympics: Russia's darlings, on the cover of every magazine, Victor with a taped ankle from too many jumps and Zhenya recovering from a hernia operation. Despite it all they had landed their side-by-side quad toe loops; Victor had landed his throw quad salchow; and gold had been inevitable after that.

But by then Victor had already been growing. And growing. And growing. Victor refused to take responsibility for Zhenya having destroyed his back; that was entirely on Zhenya. Notwithstanding, the recriminations had gone on for months. Years, if he were honest. On the fan forums they were still going on.

None of that had mattered to Victor, a self-centred sixteen year old with a gold medal already hanging around his neck. For a few months it had seemed that Victor was about to get everything he wanted. Too tall for the junior role in pairs, he'd thought that he was going to be allowed to graduate into singles at last – before that final growth spurt had edged him just past Yakov's apparently infallible height threshold. He was too tall to go back to singles; so Yakov had decreed. 

At seventeen Victor found himself still stuck in pairs: a pairs skater without a partner, a gangly boy with a quad toe loop who could pose ever so flexibly in his partner's arms, but was now too tall for that to be of any use to him.

Naturally Yakov had found him a partner. For eight years before starting with Mila, Victor had skated with Tanya. Because he wanted to win, he had learned to lead and to lift, and he had done that well too. Better than well – utterly beyond reproach. He had become a champion at that too, one of the very few young pairs skaters who had ever successfully made the transition to skating lead.

Today they even called him a legend. Victor wondered sometimes whether this was how being a champion was meant to feel, but he never admitted it. When people asked whether he had any regrets, he said only that he regretted never having been able to compete against Zhenya. 

Victor blinked, shaking off his reverie. None of that mattered now.

"Call _him_ the best?" Yuri was saying. He apparently shared Victor's scepticism about his own achievements. "Apprenticeship for what?"

"You'll be skating in seniors alongside the best in the world. You'll be learning how to follow his every move. How could you say no to that?"

"I can't, can I?" grumbled Yuri. "You're not going to let me."

"Exactly," said Yakov. 

For some time he went on about _success_ and _discipline,_ ending by concluding that in fact Victor was a terrible example for any young skater in every way other than his string of victories, so Yuri should make sure he wasn't led astray. Victor and Yuri glanced conspiratorially across at one another, forgetting in their shared amusement that they were meant to bitterly resent being thrown together without their consent.

Despite himself, Victor was starting to think that perhaps it would be entertaining to skate with Yuri. It would be a new challenge at least. He smiled.

"It will be interesting!" he said. "We'll see if he can keep up!"

"Of course I can – "

"All I want you to worry about," said Yakov, "is your own performance! The rest is not your concern. I will decide about that."

One might have thought, reflected Victor, that ten years at the very pinnacle of his discipline would have counted for something. He heard other skaters, older skaters, Western skaters, talking about their coaching teams the way that he might have talked about his accountant or his stylist. Valued advisors, yes, but nonetheless employed and paid by him. Things were different in Russia. Victor might have paid Yakov, but Yakov let there be no doubt who was the boss.

"The public announcement will be made next week," Yakov concluded. "Victor, there are interviews scheduled for you on Monday afternoon. The public relations consultant will come on Friday to prepare you."

"What about me?" objected Yuri.

"No one cares what you think about it," said Victor.

He hadn't intended it to sound nasty; it was true. No one had cared what he thought when he had been partnered with Zhenya, after all.

And Yakov did not contradict him. "Go home now. Take the afternoon off. Tomorrow we'll start your new training program."

He crossed his arms, looked at the gold Rolex on his thick wrist as if he were tired of listening to them complain, as if he had better things to be doing. As if this weren't the most important decision he had made all season. Clearly the interview was at an end.

Victor and Yuri went out into the hallway together. As soon as the door slammed shut, Victor turned to his new partner, wondering if there would be another explosion. Instead he was surprised to see an odd half smirk spreading across Yuri's face.

"What is it?"

"You know what Yakov hasn't thought of? _Tinhats._ "

Of all the things to worry about. Only in the world of a fifteen-year-old could the idea assume any importance.

"That won't happen."

"It so will," said Yuri. "You and Zhenya..."

Yet this was impossible to deny. Ten years since they'd skated together, eight years since Zhenya's first marriage, three since his second, quite a few years since they'd voluntarily exchanged anything other the most cursory and studiedly civil of greetings. And still there were regularly updated blogs chronicling every date they were scheduled to be in the same city, every glance they ever had exchanged. The fans said that Zhenya's wife and child were just a cover, that Yakov and the FFKK had forbidden them to be together, that they would be forced to remain apart until Victor retired. And then the truth would be revealed.

"I'm not going to pretend to be in love with you," said Yuri firmly. "Not even when we're skating."

"No one would believe your taste was that good," replied Victor, laughing. "Or that mine was that bad."

***

Half an hour later they were getting out of Victor's Lexus and walking up to his apartment block. No doubt Yakov was expecting them to arrive at practice tomorrow completely fresh, ready to be moulded into a new partnership like newly risen bread dough being punched down and braided into Easter bread.

Neither of them was patient enough to wait that long, but it wasn't as if Victor could just commandeer a studio at the sports palace. Even if by some miracle he had found an unbooked space, Yakov would inevitably have heard about it within ten minutes, and then there would have been shouting and trouble and unnecessary complications. Victor had chosen an apartment building with a gym specifically to get around this sort of thing – although he had never imagined that he would be inviting Yuri Plisetsky to come and train with him. 

Yuri looked wide-eyed around the foyer of the building, trying to look casual and failing, while Victor slipped the doorman a few hundred rubles to make sure that they wouldn't be disturbed. Sometimes he thought he should have sprung for a private gym, but petty bribery usually worked just as well. The gym was empty, as bright and modern as the rest of the building, and as a bonus it smelled nicer than the practice studios at the sports palace.

As if claiming the space, Yuri launched immediately into a triple jump and landed it nicely.

"Without warming up?" asked Victor.

"Like you've never done that before." 

It was not as if Victor could argue with this.

"So," Yuri continued, "you going to show me what's so great about pairs skating?"

Victor shrugged. "I'm going to show you a lift. Maybe it'll be great, maybe it won't. Partly that's up to you."

Yuri crossed his arms. "OK, what do I do?"

Victor had spent the drive from the sports palace pondering this very question. In the end he had chosen something simple, the sort of thing that he might try with a singles skater while messing around during a rehearsal for an ice show or a gala. Simple for him; perhaps not so simple for the singles skater.

"We're going to do a very basic hand-to-hand press lift. All I need you do is take a jump towards me, lock your arms, keep your body balanced and rigid, and let me do the rest. No sudden movements. You have to trust me. Any questions?"

Yuri put on an exaggerated expression of boredom with the whole affair. "If you touch my dick, I'm going to kick you in the face."

Victor couldn't help but be amused. "That wasn't a question."

"I've seen the way you lift Mila. You'd better remember that my anatomy is different, that's all."

"You've seen me lift Mila, but you've never actually paid attention, have you? There's a reason why it's called a hand-to-hand lift."

"Whatever."

Victor held out his hands to Yuri, and Yuri grudgingly laid his in them. They were chill and clammy and slick, the hands of a teenage boy who knew he was in over his head, even if he would never admit it. Victor let go of Yuri's hands, pointedly wiped his own on his leggings. Yuri just stared at him.

"Wipe your hands," prompted Victor. "They're slippery."

"Oh," said Yuri. He did as he was asked. Then he added a belated, halfhearted: "Fuck you."

Victor ignored that. He took Yuri's hands again, prepared himself. "Right. Ready? Go."

Yuri jumped. As promised, Victor did the rest. If there was a waver in his lift as he pressed Yuri up over his head, it was only because he was surprised. The boy was like a leaf, practically insubstantial. How could so many quads be packed into such a slight, pipestem frame? Victor pondered this question as he held Yuri overhead, his arms fully extended. For good measure, he slowly rotated a few times, trainers squeaking quietly against the parquet floor of the gym. In the mirrors he could see Yuri surreptitiously tilting his head a little to track his own reflection.

It wasn't a particularly stable lift, as Victor reckoned it. Yuri lacked the trained muscular control he would have needed to balance himself perfectly against Victor's hands. There were a few wobbles. On ice it would have been distinctly ropey. In the gym, as a start, it was fine. Victor gave it a few more seconds than he would have given a competitive lift, just so that Yuri could get the feeling of it. Then, before his own muscles could begin to tremble from the lactic acid buildup, he released the lift, caught Yuri, and dropped him to the floor.

Instinctively Yuri kicked back his leg, arched himself in a perfect landing arabesque. Watching him in the mirror, Victor found himself mildly impressed. Yuri might not know anything about lifts but he knew how to make himself look good coming out of one. There was some raw material to work with, at least.

"That was all right!" said Yuri, even sounding a little excited. He paused. "Wasn't it?"

"One piece of advice."

Yuri folded his arms, suddenly all insecure bravado. "Yeah?" 

"Never threaten a man who can drop you on your head without even trying."

"Oh yeah," said Yuri, rolling his eyes. "I'm so frightened. Like you'd really drop me."

"Go home tonight and look up Totmianina and Marinin on YouTube. Skate America 2004. I saw it happen, I was there." 

Victor paused for a moment, suddenly unable to shake the images from his own mind. Then he pasted on a sunny smile. 

"And we'll get started properly tomorrow! I'll see you at practice, Yura!"

"See you tomorrow. _Vitya._ "

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: This was originally intended to be a three-part story but I have now turned to the dark side (Yakov/Lilia) and thus I've put it on indefinite hiatus. I've adjusted the tagging to reflect what's there rather than what I had planned.
> 
> ***
> 
> You too can look up "Totmianina and Marinin" on YouTube, but you might want to think seriously first about whether or not you want to see it. Notwithstanding that accident, they went on to win gold at the Olympics in 2006.
> 
> And yes, it is possible for a singles skater to [do a lift with a pairs skater](https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/japans-yuzuru-hanyu-is-lifted-up-as-figure-skaters-and-news-photo/923942570#japans-yuzuru-hanyu-is-lifted-up-as-figure-skaters-and-flower-girls-picture-id923942570) without too much in the way of training. Apparently.


End file.
